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Calculators vs. PDAs in the Classroom
TheMatt writes "CNN.com is reporting about a new conflict perhaps emerging in classrooms: calculators v. PDAs. The article talks about how TI seems to be making their latest calculator more PDA-like, while PDAs are gaining
TI-like functionality. A comment on current math education is this quote from the article:
"When you have circles and ellipses, there is no way you'd be able to do this without a calculator," Jarvis said. "It helps us visualize what we're doing." Were the compass and geometry uninvented?"
What? not 6 years ago I/we were required to graph the fuckers manually, and we actually explicitly forbidden from using snazzy ti calcs to do it.
Use of the sextant is still required for obtaining masters papers. And the last time I was on a cruise ship, they were actively using their pelorus.
Among cruising sailors it is considered somewhat foolish not to pack a sextant and know how to use it. You'd hate to take a lightning strike 1000 miles from land and lose your GPS, RDF, Loran, or whatnot.
Maybe you'll be bad with the cheap sextant, but you should still get within 30 miles which will let you make landfall during daylight.
Circle: Use a compass. A compass is a simple tool that should be easier to learn than any calculator. (Adjust angle, stick pointy end into paper, draw.) And then all kinds of important tricks of geometry are possible, with just the compass - really only learnable with the compass in hand.
Elipse: put two pegs on paper, the chalk board, etc. Toss a loop of string around pegs. Pull loop of string tight with a pendic, chalk, etc. Draw with string kept tight. Lookie! an elipse! How hard was that?
I used my TI-85 to do all sorts of math, but I learned my math in books and on paper.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Unfortunately, any StrongArm-based PDA (such as the iPaq) has no math coprocessor, IIRC, so it would make a pretty lousy host for any non-trivial math software. Basic graphing or spreadsheet-level calculations would be fine, but anything requiring a lot of floating-point math is going to get ugly.
Also the differences between all numbers from 0 to 100 (so I can get my change quickly in case the cash register is broken.)
Wrong, WRONG, WRONG!!!!!
Disclaimer: I pulled graveyards at a 7-11 in 1982 and 1983.
Everyone should learn the PROPER way to make change. It pisses me off when some clueless idiot goes... "$7.47 is your change". That's not how to do it. let's say my bill was $2.53 and $7.47 *IS* my change. The correct way would be:
Say $2.53
Give Penny (say 54)
Give Penny (say 55)
Give dime (say 65)
Give dime (say 75)
Give quarter (say $3.00)
give dollar bill (say $4.00)
give dollar bill (say $5.00)
give five dollar bill (say $10.00, thank you).
That way, you know that you didn't screw up counting it, or that you didn't fsck up typeing in the amount given. Also, make damn sure you leave the money I gave you on top of the register until I agree that it's the right amount of change. This prevents "I gave you a $20! No you didn't, you gave me a $10!" arguments.
Alas, making change is a lost art.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
So a powerful CAS is absolutely possible to run on PDAs, especially ones with ARM processors. It's just not too easy to write a full-fledged symbolic CAS, so nobody's gotten around to doing it yet. But it's entirely possible.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Unfortunately, TI hasn't officially provided much information, but having been involved in the TI dev scene quite a while, I've had the opportunity to play with beta versions of these apps quite a bit. They're slightly limited when compared to Palm because they don't have touchscreen input, although the 92+/Voyage 200 calculators have a full qwerty keyboard. The software is quite nice, and I've been using it full time since my Clie broke a few weeks ago. I'll have the Clie repaired under warrantee, but for the target demographics of TI's calculators (mostly students), the Organizer software is more than powerful enough to make somebody who purchases one of these calcs reconsider whether they need to carry around a PDA as well. And trust me, consolidating the two devices and freeing up a pocket is definitely something to look forward to.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.